


Build-a-BuckyNat

by blessedharlot



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Choose Your Own Ending, F/M, Multiple Endings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-07
Updated: 2015-10-07
Packaged: 2018-04-25 05:56:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4949227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blessedharlot/pseuds/blessedharlot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you want a glimpse of what a BuckyNat arc could look like in Captain America: Civil War? Do you want it tailored to YOUR interests?</p><p>Here, build your own story! With dozens of ways for it to go down!</p><p>INSTRUCTIONS: Pick one or more Act 1 Teases, decide whether you want an Act 2 Reveal and pick it out, then choose your own Act 3 Resolution! Don’t miss the bonus mid-credit scene!</p><p>Note: One spoiler of an event leaked from Captain America: Civil War filming.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Build-a-BuckyNat

**Author's Note:**

> Heads up, up front – all scenarios include the following realities: The Soldier helped finish Nat’s training and they had a romance, Nat carries a lot of pain around it and still has complicated feelings for him, Bucky is still in love with her, and they both badly need to find a way to reacquaint themselves as different people now and learn how to be friends before anything else happens. And Nat is helping Steve and/or Bucky stealthily during Civil War. 
> 
> Where they go from here is anybody's guess.

** Act 1 teases (pick one or more): **

A) Natasha accompanies Steve to Peggy’s funeral, because she can tell her friend is hit hard by the grief. They talk, and he explains that his trip into the ice ended their relationship prematurely. Natasha muses, “Ohh… nothing else wounds like that. Love torn apart by forces outside of you both? The anger. The what ifs. The helplessness.” Steve says, “You sound like you speak from experience.” Natasha looks like she badly wants to tell him something, but eventually just nods.

B) During a quiet moment, Bucky seems to be soothing himself from a stress reaction. He smiles and mumbles in Russian. Someone is curious, “What could bring a smile to your face in Russian?” He says there was one good thing in all of it. He doesn’t elaborate.

C) Bucky wakes from a nightmare. Steve gets him talking, and learns that he once knew a woman very important to him. Bucky dreams sometimes that she might have been a mission he completed unknowingly. He won’t share her name.

D) Nat seems to be working with Tony, while public opinion begins turning against Steve. We see her at a large computer station with seven windows open, running information pertinent to the task at hand. One has old news footage of Steve and Bucky together during the war. It catches her eye, and she looks at it sadly.

** Act 2 reveals (pick one or none): **

1) Nat meets in secret with Steve. The tension between the Avengers has exploded, with no resolution yet, but Natasha wants to explain to Steve why she’s helping Tony. It turns out, he brought Bucky, who pauses his lookout duties at one point to cluelessly interrupt their conversation. She keeps her face turned away from him while the two men talk, and she deliberates her next action. Slowly, Steve notices unexpected emotions playing across her face. And when she decides to reveal herself, Bucky is first stunned into silence, and then overcome with emotion. She quickly leaves, and it falls to Steve to get fragments of an explanation from a deeply shaken Bucky.

2) There’s a skirmish between the Avenger teams, and Bucky gets a glance of her face. Afterwards, he pumps the team for information while they’re distracted by their various recovery tasks. He just *barely* keeps his true full emotions concealed. Steve gently urges Bucky not to be upset; yes, he’s attacked her before, but he clearly didn’t kill her. Barton says, with a knowing look, that she was trained too well for that to happen. Barton and Bucky keep the secret to themselves.

3) Team Steve mentions Nat amongst themselves, guessing at her motives and actions. Bucky quietly pieces together who she is. He panics, ashamedly piecing together his attacks on her, and keeps it to himself.

4) Team Steve mentions Nat amongst themselves, guessing at her motives and actions. Bucky asks questions to piece together who she is, and tells them only that he trained her. It’s a shock to everyone, including Barton. Steve’s sense of betrayal at her recent actions eases, and he sympathizes with her complicated position. But Steve still wonders whose side she’s on.

5) Meticulous records were frequently kept of the Winter Soldier program, one file of which Steve has seen. Eventually Team Steve finds footage of some of Bucky’s mission reports and training sessions, circa 1980-2010. Some footage gives insight into Tony’s parents’ death – who was involved and what control tactics were used to keep the Soldier compliant. Another shows the Soldier exhibiting out of character affection for one trainee in particular… one that Steve and Sam recognize. Perhaps Tony is present to see both pieces of footage. Watching Nat and the Soldier spar 15 years ago is surreal for everyone involved.

6) Nat joins Team Steve midway through film, arriving with data or other objects important to helping Bucky and Steve. Steve gets a cursory explanation of their training connection when it’s clear they’ve met before. She and Buck exchange mostly awkward heavy looks, and don’t really say much to each other. They must quickly figure out how to exist near each other - working together, managing doubts about each other, getting flustered by old emotions - in order to stop Baron Zemo as a team.

7) Steve and his team have to infiltrate a compound midway through the film, and are lost as to how they’ll manage it. Nat reveals her support by leaving a clue that she’s been helping them from a distance all along. In discussing it, the team explains to Bucky who this Nat person is they keep mentioning. In her absence, Buck knows details of how Nat would want them to proceed into the compound, and he walks them through her already-arranged plan. They successfully infiltrate and get what they need, and Bucky has to explain how he knows Natasha’s tactics better than Steve does. 

** Act 3 Resolutions (pick one): **

AA) Team Steve achieve what they need to, and it’s clear Nat was helping. But she’s cold to the boys, mostly absent, and she does not rejoin them, still working on some agenda that’s unclear. She also appears to be aloof to Steve, and rattled when she’s by herself. The movie ends with this thread loose.

BB) In the final climactic battle, Nat actively starts fighting for Steve partway through. She and Bucky are handling separate problems, though, and still haven’t met again by the time the battle’s done. But they both know of the others’ presence on the team by this time. In the aftermath, as she sees him from a distance and ventures toward him, he gets overwhelmed. He pushes her away, tries to leave, tries to act cold. She insists she doesn’t blame him for anything, but keeps her distance. Steve tries to resolve his own recent tension with Natasha, while also caring for Bucky.

CC) In the final climactic battle, Nat actively starts fighting for Steve partway through. She and Bucky are handling separate problems, though, and still haven’t met again by the time the battle’s done. He *still* doesn’t know that she’s Steve’s friend Natasha, and most teammates don’t know of their past yet. She approaches him after the battle, and reveals herself. He is overcome with relief, pain and joy to see her alive, to get confirmation that he didn’t kill her himself. He cries, grabs her and hugs her, apologizes in Russian and says everything he’s wanted to say for 15 years. She’s a bit more reserved than he, but offers some reassurances. She is holding back tears. They are both awkwardly hungry for fumbling communication with one another most of the time that the team is cleaning up and going home.

DD) Bucky and Steve are caught by Zemo and trapped in a bad situation. Natasha swoops in as part of the team that frees them, battling some baddies right in front of them. Bucky looks ecstatic to watch her fight, then greets her with a quiet “Your roundhouse kick is a little rusty, we could work on that.” In response, she aims two guns and a glare at him, then lands a precision kick near him to break his restraints. Somewhat apologetically, he says “good, perfect form, good job there.” They all join forces to finish the battle.

** Bonus mid credit scene! Applicable to all but one ending: **

There are subdued but heartfelt revels for Team Steve (and maybe some of Team Tony) after their final victory. Steve and Sam have joined Bucky in a quiet corner of the party that he staked out, and the three are chatting. The talk stops, though, as they watch Natasha bring two drinks and sit in an empty seat next to Bucky. She hands him one and takes a sip of the other.

Bucky looks at her, then at the drink, then at Steve and Sam, then back at the drink. She shrugs, switches the drinks, and takes a sip of the second one.

Bucky says, “When someone knows exactly how many poisons you’re immune to, that’s not the comforting gesture you seem to think it is.”

She takes his drink back and pours it into the glass she’s working on. “Geez, you try to do a guy a favor.”

“I didn’t say I wouldn’t drink it.”

“Oh, I can’t let you do that. It’s clearly too great a risk.” She holds the drink as far from him as she can while still sitting near him and sipping.

He reaches across her, gets hold of the glass and downs the rest in one gulp. They stare at each other for a beat.

“Can I die in your arms?”

“If I’ve poisoned you, I promise, you can die in my arms.”

“That sounds fair.”

“I thought so.”

*flirtus interruptus! Big shocking thing happens elsewhere at party! Then cut to scrolly credits*


End file.
